In conventional computing environments, content processing is often carried out by discrete processors. For example, such hardware processors may be provided for decoding high definition content. To date, it has been difficult integrate all necessary content processing on a single chip. Moreover, a complete implementation would typically require the implementer to become a licensed adopter of third party content in order to obtain rights to use algorithms for processing licensed content and obtain licensee keys for extracting encrypted content. Such licenses typically include compliance and robustness rules to ensure the confidentiality of licensor secrets, liabilities and legal remedies in event flaws in the implementation lead to compromising confidential information or content. Thus, software applications of second party licensees have typically been relied upon to process content, at least in part, utilizing a central processing unit, etc, before forwarding the re-encrypted video content on to graphics or visual processor in a more generic format.
Unfortunately, reliance on a central processing unit exhibits some limitations. For example, handling of licensee keys and algorithms within application executing on the CPU inevitably involves exposing this confidential information inside the processor at some point during processing. Processing of the content using said confidential processes and secrets involves transmission to and from such unit which may result in security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, even with the use of tamper resistance technologies, execution within a central processors designed for virtualization leads to an inability to guarantee a robust tamper-proof execution environment for example from hypervisors, or higher priority execution contexts than the executing virtual machine. Further, central processing units are less efficient for certain types of processing (e.g. encryption, etc.) by virtue of their general computer architectures. The additional tamper resistance and re-encryption processes lead to excessive and wasteful over-utilization of the CPU and wasting power leading to reduction in Battery-Life during Content playback. There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.